Xubuntu 9.10: Barely Functional Wacom Tablet Configuration

For some background on a single-monitor box, read that first. This file is for my dual-monitor setup, which introduces horrible problems: basically, this setup doesn’t really work.

The MMonitor and ScreenNo values restrict the tablet to the left-hand X screen. Without those settings, things get really weird.

But, with the X screen nailed down, the fundamental problem is that the tablet stylus cursor starts out restricted to just the upper-left part of the left-hand (landscape) monitor. The fraction of the screen seems somehow related to the aggregate total of the two monitors, but not in any numeric sense I can figure out.

The fix for that is tweaking the BottomX and BottomY values so that the cursor can cover the entire screen. I used the wacomcpl utility to cut-and-try various numbers until I got something close. They are quite different than the tablet’s default values: 16700 and 12064.

The values suggest that the driver expects the tablet to cover the entire range of coordinates for both monitors, but whether that’s with the right monitor rotated or not isn’t obvious. The numbers do not work out either way. Maybe it’s taking the outermost bounding box?

It is not clear why this hocus-pocus works at all, as I thought those values were supposed to restrict the stylus cursor to specific locations of the tablet’s surface. Evidently they’re scaling factors.

Note that this fdi file adds the names required by wacomcpl, without which nothing works.

The GIMP is markedly unhappy with this arrangement. Mostly, the stylus works and provides pressure information, but none of the trackballs or the tablet can select fields within some (but not all) of the dialog boxes (like, for example, File->Save…). Only the keyboard Tab key can move between fields in that situation.

The wacdump utility segfaults. This seems to be a known problem with Ubuntu 9.10, for reasons that aren’t clear.

Sometimes, but not always, the stylus cursor has an offset: the visible cursor on the screen is a few inches up-and-right of the actual tool location that’s affecting the drawing. When this happens, tweaking the BottomX and BottomY values with wacomcpl sometimes restores proper operation; the ensuing values have no relation with anything I can understand.

Much to my surprise, button remapping works perfectly: the front switch on the stylus is Button 3, the rear is Button 2. That means context menus pop up on the more easily reached switch. At least I think so.

Basically, something that worked absolutely dependably and without much manual intervention in 8.10 has become completely, totally, and utterly dysfunctional in 9.10. I do not count this as progress.

With all that in mind, here’s the /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/20thirdparty/10-linuxwacom.fdi file…

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
 <device>
 <match key="info.product" string="Wacom Graphire3 6x8">
 <merge key="input.x11_driver" type="string">wacom</merge>
 <merge key="input.x11_options.Type" type="string">stylus</merge>
 <merge key="input.x11_options.Button2" type="string">3</merge>
 <merge key="input.x11_options.Button3" type="string">2</merge>
 <merge key="input.x11_options.MMonitor" type="string">off</merge>
 <merge key="input.x11_options.ScreenNo" type="string">0</merge>
 <merge key="input.x11_options.BottomX" type="string">8146</merge>
 <merge key="input.x11_options.BottomY" type="string">11893</merge>
 <append key="info.callouts.add" type="strlist">hal-setup-wacom</append>
 <append key="wacom.types" type="strlist">eraser</append>
 <append key="wacom.types" type="strlist">cursor</append>
 </match>
 </device>
 <!-- Wacom names "parser" -->
 <device>
 <match key="info.udi" contains_not="subdev_0">
 <match key="info.udi" contains_not="subdev_1">
 <match key="info.udi" contains_not="subdev_2">
 <match key="input.x11_options.Type" contains="stylus">
 <merge key="info.product" type="string">stylus</merge>
 </match>
 <match key="input.x11_options.Type" contains="eraser">
 <merge key="info.product" type="string">eraser</merge>
 <merge key="input.x11_options.MMonitor" type="string">off</merge>
 <merge key="input.x11_options.ScreenNo" type="string">0</merge>
 <merge key="input.x11_options.BottomX" type="string">8146</merge>
 <merge key="input.x11_options.BottomY" type="string">11893</merge>
 </match>
 <match key="input.x11_options.Type" contains="cursor">
 <merge key="info.product" type="string">cursor</merge>
 </match>
 </match>
 </match>
 </match>
 </device>
</deviceinfo>